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Sunday, September 4, 2016

Kota suicides

Kota rocked by 5 student suicides in 1 month
Over the past one month, five suicides have been reported, the latest being on Saturday when an 18-year-old boy from Gopalganj in Bihar hung himself from the ceiling fan.
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Written by Sweta Dutta | Jaipur | Updated: June 30, 2015 10:42 am
kota, kota suicide, suicide, suicide cases in kota, kota student, kota student suicide The last case, reported on Saturday, was that of an 18-year-old boy from Gopalganj in Bihar who committed suicide by hanging himself from a ceiling fan.
A spate of student suicides has sent shockwaves through the local administration and the teeming student community in the coaching hub of Kota. Five suicides have been reported in the city over the past one month.
The last case, reported on Saturday, was that of an 18-year-old boy from Gopalganj in Bihar who committed suicide by hanging himself from a ceiling fan.
While police officials point to a different trigger in each case, they claim that the common underlying factors are rising performance pressure and bouts of homesickness among adolescents.
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Additional Superintendent of Police, Kota, Shantanu Kumar said: “Various reasons were found behind the five suicide cases. In the recent case, there was a love affair and the boy had written a suicide note asking his girlfriend to be informed about his death. In another case, the girl was troubled over a lesbian relationship, while in another case it was homesickness. In another incident, where a father-daughter duo committed suicide in a hotel, financial problems were cited in the suicide note. Only in one case did the student take the drastic step because of academic pressure.”
Police officials, however, added that no case has been closed yet.
In Kota, the rise in the number of suicides corresponds with the growth of the coaching industry. Kumar, who has investigated many such cases in the past, said, “In 2013, around 26 students committed suicide, in 2014 another 14 cases were reported whereas so far this year 11 cases have already come to light. It is noted that from May to July, when the new academic session starts, more cases are reported. The number of dropouts and the instances of children going into depression also increase during this period.”
“Maybe parents have to do more to ensure that the children are well taken care of and they have someone to turn to,” he said.
Poor health leading cause of stress among Kota students
Summary: The meeting was attended by 21 psychologists with experience of handling students at coaching centres.The collector will hold a second round of meeting with psychologists before submitting the report. JAIPUR: In August, 17-year-old meritorious student Rishabh Sharma (name changed) from Mau district in Madhya Pradesh quit his medical coaching within two months of joining a centre.A clinical psychologist, studying the causes of stress among students, interviewed him to conclude that prolonged illness (viral fever and diarrhea) had forced him to be absent for 23 days in two months. Further investigations revealed that due to irregular eating habits and unhygienic consumption of fast food, the immune system of the boy had weakened.This is turning out to be the one of the major reasons for stress, say clinical psychologists, who submitted their preliminary report to the district administration of Kota.The report was sought by district collector Ravi Kumar Surpur after he held a meeting with clinical psychologists this week to find out reasons for stress among students, which in extreme cases lead to suicides.A high-level meeting, presided by chief minister Vasundhara Raje, was earlier held in Jaipur to contain suicides in Kota.
JAIPUR: In August, 17-year-old meritorious student Rishabh Sharma (name changed) from Mau district in Madhya Pradesh quit his medical coaching within two months of joining a centre.A clinical psychologist, studying the causes of stress among students, interviewed him to conclude that prolonged illness (viral fever and diarrhea) had forced him to be absent for 23 days in two months. Further investigations revealed that due to irregular eating habits and unhygienic consumption of fast food, the immune system of the boy had weakened.This is turning out to be the one of the major reasons for stress, say clinical psychologists, who submitted their preliminary report to the district administration of Kota.The report was sought by district collector Ravi Kumar Surpur after he held a meeting with clinical psychologists this week to find out reasons for stress among students, which in extreme cases lead to suicides.A high-level meeting, presided by chief minister Vasundhara Raje, was earlier held in Jaipur to contain suicides in Kota. The meeting was attended by 21 psychologists with experience of handling students at coaching centres.The collector will hold a second round of meeting with psychologists before submitting the report..
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Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Poor-health-stressing-out-coaching-students-in-Kota/articleshow/54009153.cms
Amity suicide PIL in Supreme Court today
The Supreme Court will on Monday take up as a PIL a letter written to Chief Justice of India T S Thakur and other judges by Sushant’s friend Raghav Sharma on August 20.
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Written by Utkarsh Anand | New Delhi | Updated: September 5, 2016 5:56 am
amity, amity student, amity law student suicide, sushant rohilla, amity university, amity university student death, law student suicide, Amity law student suicide, delhi news, Sushant Rohilla
Three weeks after Amity Law School student Sushant Rohilla killed himself after being denied permission to write his exams for lack of attendance, the country’s highest court has heard his family and friends’ appeal for justice.
The Supreme Court will on Monday take up as a PIL a letter written to Chief Justice of India T S Thakur and other judges by Sushant’s friend Raghav Sharma on August 20, requesting them to not allow Sushant’s death to remain just another incident of a student’s suicide.
Raghav, along with Sushant’s sister Mehek and uncle Dinesh, had earlier taken the campaign to social media, creating the hashtag #JusticeForSushant.
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The 21-year-old third year law student had hanged himself at his home in Delhi on August 10 after Amity barred him from sitting for semester exams because he did not have the requisite attendance. Sushant left behind a note saying he was a failure, and did not wish to live.
A week after the incident, Amity Law School had said in a statement that Sushant had 43 per cent attendance and this had been “conveyed to his parents many times through mail”. The school is affiliated to Guru Gobind Singh IP University, the statement said, and “the attendance, as per the rules of IP University, was sent to IP, which has the sole discretion to issue admit cards… for sitting in examinations.” It added, “Amity Law School had absolutely no role.”
Nine days after Sushant’s suicide, two faculty members, B P Singh Sehgal and Isheeta Rutabhasini, resigned amid protests by students and the family. The Amity administration maintained both had left on their own, taking into account the sentiments of students.
In his emotionally charged letter, Raghav wrote proudly about Sushant’s good performance in examinations and his exceptional debating skills, and accused the college of being extremely unfair to his friend. Sushant, the letter claimed, was forced to repeat an entire academic year in the five-year BA LLB course because he had failed to maintain 75 per cent attendance, despite having bone fide reasons for missing college.
Raghav, a fourth year student of the same college, wrote that before taking the extreme step, Sushant had written to the founder president of the Amity Group, pleading with him to allow him to sit for the semester exam, since he had valid reasons for not being able to attend classes.
In his email to the founder president, Sushant had underscored his accomplishments in moot court competition and
other extra curricular activities, and written that debarment from the exam would destroy him, and he might not
“mentally survive” it.
Raghav accused a particular member of the Amity faculty of constantly harassing Sushant, and alleged that despite complaints by students, the college administration had not conducted a fair inquiry. The letter to the CJI and other judges pointed out that Sushant’s family had filed a criminal complaint, accusing the teacher of abetment to suicide, and asking that the college be tried for being “institutional abettors”.
Raghav’s letter was placed before the Supreme Court’s PIL committee, comprising Justices Anil R Dave and J S Khehar, which directed the registry to treat it as a writ petition under Article 32 of the Constitution since it raised issues of violation of fundamental rights of students.
Why Kota Kills: Two More Suicides in the ‘Deathtrap’ for Students
Aviral Virk
May 8, 2016, 6:28 pm
Twenty-four students have committed suicide in Kota in the last sixteen months. What’s common between them is that they were all enrolled at one of the 130-odd coaching institutes in the largest, most successful coaching hub in the country. Though these students form a small percentage of the 1.5 lakh students who come to Kota each year, they cannot be brushed aside as mere statistics. The Quint tries to understand how a breeding ground for academic excellence is snuffing out young lives.
Kota Death Toll Reaches Eight As Two Allegedly Commit Suicide
PTI
May 8, 2016, 4:16 pm
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In what seems like an unending series of unfortunate events, two students allegedly committed suicide in Kota after they performed poorly in the exams.
18-year-old Keshav Meena alias Monu, resident of Harinagar in Khatoli town of the district, hanged himself from the ceiling fan of his rented room in Mahaveernagar Extension area, a police personnel said.The police broke into his room this morning on after being informed by the landlord and found his body.
Meena was rushed to a hospital where he was declared dead. He had been living in Kota for about a year and was preparing for medical entrance tests at Career Point, a coaching institute. No suicide note was recovered from the room.
It is suspected that poor performance in the NEET exam he sat for on May 1 is likely to be the reason behind the suicide. Investigation in the case is underway and the body has been handed over to the family members after a postmortem.
On Thursday, a final year student of B.Tech consumed poison in his room and succumbed during treatment at a hospital yesterday. Avanish Meena (22), a resident of Hingoniya village in Kanwas Thesil here, consumed poison in Subashnagar II area of the city, Sub-Inspector Ramkishan said.
The deceased had reportedly not performed well in one of his papers and was scheduled to appear for the next exam on Thursday, but he missed it and consumed poison, Ramkishan explained. He said the victim had called his family and informed he was “going to heaven”.
The body has been handed over to the family members after postmortem.
This is the eight suicide by a student in Kota this year. Last year the number of suicide cases by students taking coaching were 19, following which guidelines to coaching institutes to check such deaths were initiated.
Recently, Kota district collector Ravi Kumar Surpur had written an emotional letter to parents of over 1.50 lakh students in coaching institutes here, asking them not to force their expectations on the children.
Why Kota Kills: 7 Reasons Behind Student Suicides in Coaching Town
Aviral Virk
May 4, 2016, 5:07 pm
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1. Parental Expectations
Nobody knows if anyone ever asked Kriti if she wanted to be an engineer. A day after her IIT JEE (Main) results were declared, she jumped from the fifth floor of her rented apartment in Kota. She’d passed with 144/360 marks, way below her expectations.
Bright, cheerful and ambitious – that’s how 17-year-old Kriti’s neighbours in Ghaziabad remember her. That she was depressed went unnoticed even by her parents who stayed with her for most part of the two years that she spent studying for IIT at Kota’s Vibrant Academy.
Twenty-four students enrolled in one of the 130-odd coaching institutes in Kota have committed suicide in the last sixteen months.
The Quint visited Kota to find out why.
The Quint's Documentary: Why Kota Kills
2. No Screening Process
Of the 130-odd coaching institutes in Kota, none conduct a screening or entrance test. Not all students are cut out for IIT or AIIMS. Many don’t even have an aptitude for mathematics or science. India’s shadow education system thrives on our obsession with doctors and engineers which has led a dying industrial town like Kota to evolve into a booming education hub.
Pramod Maheshwari, who co-founded Career Point, is brutally honest about how business gets the better of education in Kota.
“If we don’t admit a child, some other coaching institute will pick him up. A second reason for not having a screening process is that no parent likes to hear that his/her child won’t make it to the IITs. They will push for it and say ‘Let him give it a shot, at worst one year will get wasted’.”
Kota is full of big hoardings boasting All India Ranks. (Photo: The Quint)
Kota is full of big hoardings boasting All India Ranks. (Photo: The Quint)
3. Money Talks
It’s unparalleled success rate has ensured that Kota is the go-to destination for IIT and AIPMT coaching. The coaching institutes are able to maintain their academic records with the help of independent syllabi that goes into far greater detail than what is taught in Class 11 and 12. Ex-IITian teachers and a gruelling study schedule breaks down12 hours into 90 minute classes separated by 10 minute breaks.
Speaking to The Quint, Sfurti who’s studying at one of the biggest coaching institutes in Kota says her institute allots classes on the basis of aptitudes. Those in the top batches are given express treatment – like special classes, fully-equipped libraries and 24-hour teachers on call for clearing doubts. Potential toppers are given fully-furnished apartments with a cook, maid and scooters.
When you see others doing well it instills a sense of competition. But when you see them being rewarded with money and other facilities, it leaves you feeling insecure.
Sfurti
Prayers scribbled on the walls of Kota’s Radhe Shyam temple are indicative of the kind of the pressure students are under. (Photo: The Quint)
Prayers scribbled on the walls of Kota’s Radhe Shyam temple are indicative of the kind of the pressure students are under. (Photo: The Quint)
4. Poaching Toppers
In Kota, scouts who identify potential toppers are common. Coaching institutes are known to lure them with money, just so that their top rank in the IIT or AIPMT can be published under their institute’s name. Crores are spent on advertising these top All India Ranks in newspapers and on hoardings across the country to lure more students to join them.
Sfurti claims a friend of hers was offered big money to shift to her coaching institute just days before the exam.
Daughter of a leading ENT specialist in Kota, Sfruti is fighting pressure as she prepares for the AIPMT. (Photo: The Quint)
Daughter of a leading ENT specialist in Kota, Sfruti is fighting pressure as she prepares for the AIPMT. (Photo: The Quint)
5. Catch ‘em Young
The coaching institutes have realised the business potential of starting coaching classes for children as young as 13. These students are enrolled in what is called a dummy school. On paper, they are enrolled in a government-recognised school, but in practice they are attending coaching classes instead of regular school. Attendance is not a criteria to get into a higher class.
There is now a law that stops coaching institutes from catering to the education needs of a class 8 student.
We exist because of our failing education system. The government is focusing on social welfare schemes and shows high enrolment numbers to prove its education system is working. But where is the quality? Teachers should be given incentives to get results, not make mid-day meals.
Pramod Maheshwari, Director, Career Point
6. Dummy Schools
Ranjan, a government employee from Patna had filled up forms for his 13-year-old son to admit him to a coaching institute. He wants his son to crack the IIT and is going to pay ten times his current school fees to give him a four-year headstart to the entrance exam.
Ranjan’s son will not only be straightjacketed into a career choice, but he will have to leave his home, school and friends to live all by himself in Kota.
Ranjan and Ruby Kumari insist their 13-year-old is ready to leave home and study for IIT in Kota. (Photo: The Quint)
Ranjan and Ruby Kumari insist their 13-year-old is ready to leave home and study for IIT in Kota. (Photo: The Quint)
Dr Surbhi Goyal insists this is detrimental to a child considering s/he is deprived of regular school and necessary peer interaction.
Kids from small towns and big cities come to Kota. The institutional nature of this coaching hub ends in a classroom. Outside the class, the child is left to his or her own devices. Very few 13 year olds are mentally equipped to handle the responsibility and the culture shock. Many seek out solace in relationships. One of the cases I had reviewed, the girl committed suicide because she was pregnant. She was from a small town and didn’t know who to go to for help. Drug habits and loans are other reasons why children end their lives.
Dr Surbhi Goyal, Counsellor
7. Alternate Reality
Like Surjeet, Lovy has made no friends and struggles to cope with the studies and the culture differences in Kota. (Photo: The Quint)
Like Surjeet, Lovy has made no friends and struggles to cope with the studies and the culture differences in Kota. (Photo: The Quint)
Kota is an alternate social and cultural universe. It has allowed a welder’s son from Bihar to crack the IITs and secure a Rs 1.2 crore pay package from Microsoft. On the other end of the spectrum is Lovy from Delhi who sought timely help from a counsellor after being ragged on “for wearing shorts and dresses”.
Most of the people here are from MP and Bihar. I’m used to wearing shorts and dresses, but the girls in the hostel talk behind my back and say I have too much attitude because I’m from Delhi. But that’s not the case. It deeply affects me when people have such wrong misconceptions about me and because of this I have no friends.
Why Kota is so killing
Akhilesh Singh | TNN | Jan 3, 2016, 12.00 AM IST
Rahul Kumar, 17, studies for a periodic tests with notes, daily targets, and inspirational quotes covering his walls in a 10 sq-ft room. A native of Khagariya in Bihar, he came to Kota in May to crack his way into a medical college and since then, hasn’t left the Talwandi region where his coaching institute and hostel are located.Rahul Kumar, 17, studies for a periodic tests with notes, daily targets, and inspirational quotes covering his... Read More
18-hour study schedules. A brutal sorting system that segregates 'average' students. No fee refund policies for those who want out
'We can't take it anymore. Our parents have told us to return home only after cracking IIT-JEE," said two distressed young students to psychologist Dr ML Agarwal in Jawaharnagar, Kota. The boys were both from Bhatinda, Punjab, where they lived in large joint families. They found themselves unable to cope in their new environment, with daily tutorial classes, and having to study for up to 18 hours a day. "It took months of therapy at a rehabilitation centre, and the involvement of their families, to restore them," says Dr Agarwal.
READ ALSO: Ex-Kota IITian recalls the pain
These breakdowns are all too common, across a city that reinvented itself in the late '90s as coaching hub for the hyper-competitive engineering and medical school exams. Roughly 1.6 lakh teenagers from the surrounding states flock to Kota's coaching institutes every year, paying between 50,000 and a lakh for annual tuition. Some begin early, as coaching centres also run ghost schools where they enroll middle-school students. In a few institutes, they are taught by IIT alumni, who claim salaries of Rs 1.5-2 crore for their expertise. Neither coaching centres nor hostels have exit policies or refunds, so for students who borrow money to come to Kota, the stakes are even higher.
Most students live in rented rooms with minimal facilities. They may desperately dream of IIT, but many of them are unprepared for the psychological costs. Kota has now become a byword for student suicides. A 14-year-old boy killed himself recently, the 30th suicide last year. Purushottam Singh, whose nephew Shivdutt committed suicide on December 22, is in tears as he talks of the boy. Back home in Kollari village, Dholpur, Singh says, "there were high expectations of him. His family and neighbours had already started calling him doctor sahib." The parents of 17-year-old Suresh Mishra (name changed), from Vidisha, now regret having sent him to Kota. "It started with headache, fatigue and bed-wetting. He now suffers from blackouts, partial memory loss and occasional hallucinations," says his father Mukund.
Around the world, student burnout is caused by high rates of physical and emotional exhaustion, a sense of being depersonalised, and a shrunken sense of personal achievement. Kota is a cauldron for all these feelings, with other factors like the fear of letting down one's family, or not having any career alternatives.
All around Kota, the message is to excel, or be left behind. Billboards celebrate success and star students. Entry into IITs or the other engineering and medical schools is seen as the only measure of worth. Coaching institutes, though, admit anyone who can pay the fee. Then begins the brutal sorting of students into different batches on the basis of their performance. Those who lag in their studies live in terror of these internal assessments, and struggle with their sense of inadequacy. Some are doubly challenged, with the Class XII board and the competitive exams.
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READ ALSO: It is no better for pre-med students
The problem, though, is that while Kota's coaching centres can find and hone smart students into the perfect JEE test-takers, they are thrown by "weakness" in students. Their performance criteria does not factor in vulnerability or burnout at all, making it hard for students to seek help. As Naveen Maheshwari, the director of Kota's largest coaching institute puts it, "average performers are bound to fail" in this competitive place. "In such an environment, parents should understand that IITs and AIIMS are not the end of the world. They should stop imposing their own dreams on children."
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All of these coaching centers transform the students into machines...kill the joy of thinking..curtail creativity...i quit a gate coaching institute half way cuz of the methods they use...its better ... Read MoreHEADSHOT Olympus
And yet, the idea that coaching centres have a responsibility for the mental wellbeing of students in their tutelage is only now dawning on them. Maheshwari now plans to institute random silent psychometric tests to detect vulnerable students who can be kept under watch. However, he claims that students get even more depressed if their parents take them back home.
Meanwhile, jolted by the serial suicides, the district administration is also awakening to its responsibility. Kota collector Ravi Kumar, says, "We have taken some steps, like an advisory to coaching institutes to screen students for aptitude. We are setting up a helpline to counsel students."